On Wednesday, March 13, the Archie Williams drama students, known as the Peregrine Players, opened their play, “Best o’ th’ Bard.” On four consecutive days, the Peregrine Players performed in the Archie Williams Little Theater and drama classroom, honoring the best works of renowned playwright William Shakespeare.
The Peregrine Players performed excerpts from several of Shakespeare’s classic plays, including Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Taking place March 13-16 at 7 p.m., both casts performed simultaneously, with one in the Little Theater and one in the drama classroom.
16th-century acclaimed playwright William Shakespeare wrote pieces with drama and nuance, communicated through refined Old English. The challenge for the Peregrine Players was to stay true to the Shakespearean texts while making them accessible to a modern audience.
“We realized that it wasn’t as difficult to memorize the language as it was to portray it… The difficult part is that the audience doesn’t know what we’re saying half of the time. I had to learn how to portray my emotions without the words,” said sophomore Georgia Conway, who played Hamlet.
Archie Williams drama teacher Jasper Thelin organized the show as a “scene-fest,” with excerpts from scenes, sonnets, and soliloquies, rather than putting on a play with a continuous storyline. As a challenge, Thelin selected roles to test students’ acting abilities, allowing them the opportunity to improve.
“Some kids who are quieter, I had [them] do bold, bloody-type things. And some kids who are really extroverted, I tried to find [them parts] that [had] subtlety and nuance, or gentleness, so that everybody had different kinds of challenges acting-wise,” Thelin said.
Actors such as junior Julia Conrad, who played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, also confronted the struggle of directing the scenes on their own.
“In class, we would all split up into our separate scenes, and we basically directed ourselves. Jasper gave some instruction, but for the most part, we were on our own with learning lines and making the choreography,” Julia said.
The Best o’ th’ Bard performance granted the drama students unique opportunities to improve their skills. According to Thelin, the student actors worked hard to dissect their performances to express many of Shakespeare’s hidden meanings.
“Students digging in on little slices of [the performance] was the main success of the show… The art of acting is about taking it seriously and doing the work right. It’s digging in and asking questions, trying different things out. That was a great part of this process,” Thelin said.
The Peregrine Players’ next performance, Peter and the Star Catcher, opens May 2 and follows the origin story of Peter Pan. Later in May, all Archie Williams students will receive the opportunity to audition and later perform a variety show of musicals, skits, and original short plays which will be open to the community.
